The Caretaker

For a resident of such a distinguished and well-known madhouse as La Poudrière I must admit that I feel fine, and enjoy a bewildering degree of freedom of thought, expression and movement. At any rate greater than the stars'. And then there's my own highly ambiguous position at the hospital. As caretaker and a kind of jack-of-all-trades (including that of observer) I have at my disposal one of the gardeners' cottages, along with the abovementioned grape and tomato arbor: they lie at the park's outer edge and are surrounded by a high, palisade-like fence with a heavy, lockable gate, so that when I wish I can be wholly isolated in my own world. For example I can get drunk in peace, though that happens very seldom now. And I can smoke hashish with al Assadun, even if we usually do that up in the tower at Lefèvre's, where he has installed a first-class hi-fi set—since music is an almost indispensable part of the hash. Likewise Dr. Lefèvre and I can travel to the sun as often as we wish; this always happens at my house.

But that isn't the most important thing; most important are the mornings and the nights, when I can be utterly undisturbed in my work, and can sit in the garden with my breakfast before proceeding up to the Institute or the clinic to discharge my more routine duties.

The grape and tomato arbor I've described, but the house is just as important; it's old, whitewashed and very simple, like the oldest peasant houses in this district: dirt floor, open fireplace, heavy ceiling beams and a very small sleeping alcove. Outside: the brook, some leafy trees and the plants. Best of all are the mornings, going out barefoot and almost naked right after sunrise, feeling the spicy, fresh scent, the cool morning air, and looking at the light in the treetops or the espaliers. I get a boundless pleasure from these simple things; strictly speaking it's the only happiness I have. I prefer each day to be exactly like the one before.

This has brought me complete clarity of soul, the old man's peace, a quiet heart. Perhaps I miss the sea at times, I don't know.

I said "as caretaker." Of course it's not that simple. It turns out that nothing, absolutely nothing, is simple when you look a bit more closely. Now, for example, there's someone howling up in the clinic again; it's probably the Russian ambassador's wife. She cries like a wolf. In the soundless night this lonely wolf-howl from the ward cuts loose like a stripe on the black night sky, like the trail of a shooting star. The ululating, drawn-out cry is repeated a couple of times. Why do the wolves in the forest also howl thus? For all its wolfishness it's still first and foremost a human howl. She's probably up there hanging onto the window bars while she howls, as she usually does during attacks. If it continues, Dr. Lefèvre will have to leave his desk and his work and go over to the ward to take care of her. al Assadun can't do it because she always tries to rape him. It's very clear that at a Soviet embassy in a Christian country this is not compatible with diplomatic dignity and etiquette. And it's evident that for the wife herself these diplomatic years beside her silent, flawless ambassador-husband were pure purgatory, before she finally said to hell with it and took to howling and raping freely. That's how she came here. Nothing is simple.

Of course I'm not a "caretaker," but—as Lefèvre puts it—"combination caretaker and physician-in-chief of the Institute," and as such I naturally have a radical insight into all that goes on here, into everything that happens. Now when I say "physician-in-chief," that's of course to be understood in a higher, so to speak purely spiritual sense—as chief ideologist and father-confessor to nearly everybody From the viewpoint of the employment roster I'm a caretaker. Janitor. Cleaning man.

Especially this last, being the place's trusted renovation worker, must not be underestimated from an epistemological standpoint. How else, for example, would I have had any awareness of the stupendous quantities of prophylactics with which the diplomat's wife fills her wastebasket between attacks? What, indeed, would I have understood of anything at all without access to wastebaskets and garbage pails?

Another side of the matter is that I have full opportunity to pursue my studies and my research here. As I said, my interests are the same as before, even though I've acquired an ice-cold scientific attitude to reality. Of course while collecting my documents I had to come sooner or later to one of the central points in our Christian culture—possibly to its heart, to the matter's core. It's natural too that I began on the topic in just the geographic situation in which I now find myself: in a landscape which has been the historic arena for our culture's very inmost concerns. One is located even more centrally if one travels some miles further to the northeast, up to Trier. It was impossible to continue with The History of Bestiality without taking up the Christian churches' heretic and witch trials.

I must add at once that this isn't a theological matter alone, but to just as great a degree a secular, judicial problem—one dear to the hearts not only of theologians, but of jurists as well. The two disciplines must not be separated too strictly. What would the church's power have been without support from the legal profession? It would have been built on sand. But it happened, and it had to happen, that love and justice, those two main pillars of good, united in the great crusade against Evil.

Theologians and jurists shrouded themselves in their black robes, in the color of love and justice, and they were victorious in the fight.

As I said, for a man of my profession—a bestialicist and demonologist—the meeting was inevitable, though I postponed it as long as I could. A tempting theme it wasn't. But illuminates a great deal.

Now I'm getting off the track; for now, I only mention the matter to illustrate how my position as chief ideologist and head physician at La Poudrière may develop. It's not enough that I can pursue my studies here, and my record keeping; but when I outlined my plan of work for Lefèvre he reacted with enthusiasm, and asked me to prepare a couple of lectures on the subject—lectures which will be given at the Institute, both for staff members and for that part of the clientele which isn't (with a couple of exceptions) domiciled in the security ward.

Part of Lefèvre's therapeutic method consists of regular evening lectures of this sort.

I'm as good as finished with lecture number one, and not many days are left before I give it. It will contain certain insights into the history of both the church and the legal community, a topic in which above all the coupling of the two orientations is my own idea. Later I also want to deal with the relation between the servants of righteousness and the world's profane masters and rulers after the church had lost its untrammeled power.

But the first lecture will deal with the Christian heretic and witch trials, under the title:

She just howled again up in the ward. The long, lonesome wolf howl. I could almost answer her by howling back.

But a renovation worker doesn't do such things.

A couple of centuries ago the diplomat's wife wouldn't have been able to sit in a fashionable luxury madhouse and fill her wastebasket with prophylactics; she would have been burned like other witches, since it would hardly have been possible to drive the wolves from the soul of a woman who was still alive.

Many have tried it, but few were chosen.

By the way, plenty of men were burned too.

It goes without saying that in my lectures the Inquisition won't be treated in a moralizing or hostile manner, but from a purely medico-philosophical, psychiatric point of view as an important piece in a pattern. As a stone in a mosaic about our culture, which can help to portray its true face and to explain why it has brought us where we are today.

Can a nobler motive be imagined?